Pro Fishing Equipment Review

Archive for April, 2016

A handful of patterns emerged among the top 10 pros at the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance on Kentucky Lake. Flipping claimed the top two spots, while others cranked, threw swimbaits around shad spawn areas or dragged various bottom baits.
Here are the details of the baits used by the top 10 pros on Kentucky Lake.

It was a Buckeye State sweep at the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance on Kentucky Lake. Steve Keller Jr. of Bethel, Ohio, won the co-angler crown today with a three-day total weight of 34 pounds, 7 ounces. Keller actually once sold a Ranger bass boat to the tournament's pro winner, Steve Floyd of Leesburg, Ohio.

The flipping bite is back on top at Kentucky Lake. Not ledges. Not offshore. No mega-schools. Just good old-fashioned shallow power-fishing around flooded bushes. It seems like it's been a long time since that could be said after a multi-day FLW event on the 160,000 acre Tennessee River reservoir.
The man to put the flipping bite back in the winner's circle at this week's Costa FLW Series event presented by Lowrance is Steve Floyd of Leesburg, Ohio. Floyd landed 19 pounds, 8 ounces on the final day to surge ahead from nearly 9 pounds back of day-two leader Travis Fox. He earned the win by a slim 5-ounce margin over local flipping expert Ramie Colson Jr.

One thing has gone according to plan this week at the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance on Kentucky Lake: the weather.
That's right, the weatherman nailed this week's seesawing conditions, starting with sunny skies and highs in the 80s on Thursday and mild, overcast weather on Friday. And today, he was spot on with his forecast for morning thunderstorms and heavy rain. Go figure.

Hopes were high yesterday that the ledges would turn on by the weekend in the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance on Kentucky Lake. Alas, it appears that a true postspawn ledge bite is not meant to be.
The most consistent patterns have been flipping main-lake islands and bushes on spawning flats or cranking gravel bars and shallow channel drops - mini ledges, you might call them.
Travis Fox took the lead with a somewhat unique spawning pattern that's producing both largemouths and smallmouths.

Hopes were high yesterday that the ledges would turn on by the weekend in the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance on Kentucky Lake. Alas, it appears that a true postspawn ledge bite is not meant to be.
The most consistent patterns have been flipping main-lake islands and bushes on spawning flats or cranking gravel bars and shallow channel drops - mini ledges, you might call them.
Travis Fox took the lead with a somewhat unique spawning pattern that's producing both largemouths and smallmouths.

Arkansas pro Travis Fox brought in the biggest limit of the tournament today - 24 pounds, 14 ounces - to race into the lead going into the final day of the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance on Kentucky Lake. His two-day total is 40-12.
Mark Rose retains his runner-up position after posting a day-two weight of 16-14. He has 35 pounds even for the tournament.

It's tough to say why the fishing has slowed on Kentucky Lake on day two of the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance. The air temperature is in the upper 70s with partly cloudy skies and a steady breeze that's blowing out of the north. The fish should be either moving up to spawn or loading up on staging areas. Maybe the north wind is part of one of those dreaded second-day-after-a-front deals stemming from Wednesday night's storms, or perhaps heavy fishing pressure from this event, another two-day event on the lake that concludes today and a much larger event from the far north end has taken its toll on the fish. A little sunshine would probably help the shallow bite. It'd help the staging bite too. Yesterday sunshine concentrated those fish. In the overcast conditions they tend to roam.

The ledge bite isn't happening yet at Kentucky Lake, but it's coming. A few of the top pros on day one of the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance say they're in "survival mode" right now. They're catching fish, but really they just want to make sure to be around for the weekend, when it's quite possible the ledges will start churning out the kind of early summer limits that Kentucky Lake is known for. A few pros did idle and graph ledges this afternoon and found some early schools, but that pattern isn't quite right yet. Most of the fish are being caught from areas too shallow to scan.

Kentucky Lake wasn't its typical self on day one of the Costa FLW Series Central Division event presented by Lowrance. At least, the results don't seem typical. Instead of a top 10 packed full of 20-pound stringers, only one angler managed to break that mark.
Sam Lashlee, a local juggernaut and Strike King pro-staffer from Camden, Tenn., caught 21 pounds to jump into the early lead.